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C A M B R I D G E T E X T S I N T H E
H I S T O R Y O F P O L I T I C A L T H O U G H T
M O S E S H E S S
The Holy History of Mankind and Other Writings
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C A M B R I D G E T E X T S I N T H E
H I S T O R Y O F P O L I T I C A L T H O U G H T
Series editors
R G , Reader in Philosophy, University of Cambridge
Q S , Regius Professor of Modern History in the
University of Cambridge
Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought is now firmly estab-
lished as the major student textbook series in political theory. It aims
to make available to students all the most important texts in the history
of western political thought, from ancient Greece to the early twentieth
century. All the familiar classic texts will be included, but the series seeks
at the same time to enlarge the conventional canon by incorporating an
extensive range of less well-known works, many of them never before
available in a modern English edition. Wherever possible, texts are pub-
lished in complete and unabridged form, and translations are specially
commissioned for the series. Each volume contains a critical introduc-
tion together with chronologies, biographical sketches, a guide to further
reading, and any necessary glossaries and textual apparatus. When com-pleted the series will aim to offer an outline of the entire evolution of
western political thought.
For a list of titles published in the series, please see end of book
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M O S E S H E S S
The Holy Historyof Mankind
and Other Writings
S H L O M O A V I N E R I
Herbert Samuel Professor of Political Science
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, , UK West th Street, New York, – , USA
Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, , AustraliaRuiz de Alarcón , Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town , South Africa
http://www.cambridge.org
C in the selections, translations and editorial matter Cambridge University Press
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
Typeface Ehrhardt ./ pt. System LATEX ε []
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
hardback paperback
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Contents
Introduction page ix
Chronology of the life of Moses Hess xxviii
A note on the text xxxii
Bibliographical note xxxiv
The Holy History of Mankind
:
The First Main Period of the Holy History – or the
History of Revelation of God, the Father
First Period: India. From Adam to the Deluge
Second Period: Assyria. From Noah to Abraham
Third Period: Egypt. From Abraham to Moses
Fourth Period: Palestine – Phoenicia. From Moses to David
Fifth Period: Babylonia – Persia. From David to the Exile
Sixth Period: Greece. From Ezra to Matathias Maccabaeus
Seventh Period: Rome. From Matathias Maccabaeus to
Jesus Christ
Note
The Second Main Period of the Holy History – or the
History of Revelation of God, the Son
First Period: Rome. From Christ to the Migration of the
Peoples
vii
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Contents
Second Period: France. From Leo the Great to St Gregory
Third Period: England. From St Gregory to Charles
Martell
Fourth Period: Saxons, Slavs, and Scandinavians. From
Charles Martell to Gregory the Seventh Fifth Period: Prussia. From Gregory the Seventh to the
Exile [of the Papacy]
Sixth Period: South America. From John Wycliffe to
Martin Luther
Seventh Period: North America. From Martin Luther to
Benedict Spinoza
Note
The Third Main Period of the Holy History – or the
History of Revelation of God, the Holy Spirit
First Period: North America. From Benedict Spinoza to
the French Revolution
Second Period: Europe. The Revolution
Note
An Interlude (instead of an Introduction) to a correct
judgment of these pages
: ,
First Chapter: The Natural Striving of Our Age or the
Foundation of the Holy Kingdom
Second Chapter: Our Present Plight as the Mediator of the
Foundation of the Kingdom
Third Chapter: The New Jerusalem and the End of Days
:
Appendix: Christ and Spinoza (from Rome and Jerusalem)
Index
viii
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Introduction
()
Moses Hess is today buried in the cemetery of the first Israeli kibbutz,
overlooking the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee. Yet after he died
in Paris in he was interred in the Jewish cemetery in Deutz, near
Cologne, and the epitaph Vater der Deutschen Sozialdemokratie (Father
of German Social-Democracy) was inscribed on his tombstone; more
than eighty years later, his body was transferred to Israel, where he is
considered one of the forerunners of Zionism. This is an unusual odysseyfor a person who was born in the Judengasse in Bonn, became involved in
the pre- German radical movement, and spent most of his life as a
socialist exile in France.
When Hess is today mentioned in historical studies, he is usually con-
nected with Karl Marx, as both colleague and protagonist in the early
communist movement; on the other hand, in Israel he is revered as one
of the forerunners of Zionism, since in his Rome and Jerusalem (), he
advocated the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. Yethis writings are little known, and have been hardly translated. At the time,
however, he exerted considerable influence, and it was he who introduced
Marx – six years his junior – to communist ideas; the latter referred to
him, in a somewhat ambivalent comment, as ‘my communist rabbi’.
Hess’ life story is emblematic of a whole generationof pre- German
radical thinkers and activists. Like Marx and Heine, he was born to Jewish
parents in the Rhineland, which in the first half of the nineteenth century
became the hotbed of radicalism in Germany. The reason for this radi-
calism was not only that the region was economically the most developed
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Introduction
in Germany. At the Congress of Vienna of the area was annexed
to Prussia, but for most of the preceding two decades it had been under
French rule – Republican, and then Napoleonic. During this period all
feudal privileges were abolished, the French Civil Code was introduced,
all religious differences before the law were set aside, and the Jewish pop-ulation (proportionally larger than in any other region of Germany) was
granted equal civil rights. After Napoleon’s defeat, the newly established
conservative Prussian administration tried to undo much of the French
emancipatory legislation: this caused much tension among many of the
population, who had grown up under the freer conditions of French rule
and, knowing French, had access to French revolutionary literature. This
was especially evident among the Jewish population, who found itself
once more deprived of civil rights and virtually thrown back into pre-emancipation days. Thus, more than any other area in the German lands,
the Rhineland became a breeding ground for revolutionary ideas.
It was into this ambience that Moses Hess was born in to an
orthodox Jewish family of petty merchants. Like many of his background,
he rebelled against the constricting education given to him at home and in
the traditional Jewish heder ; though he never attended a German-language
Gymnasium, he hoped to enrol at the university. In the meantime, he and
a group of his friends became avid readers of French and, to a lesser
degree, German philosophical and political literature: as Hess mentions
in his diaries, his reading included Benjamin Constant and Victor Hugo,
Rousseau and Helvetius, Fichte and Goethe, Chateaubriand and Schiller,
the medieval mystic Jakob Böhme and the romantic author Jean Paul. It
was an eclectic self-education for a young boy whose family hoped he
would join the family business; yet Hess wanted to become a writer –
though in his diaries he admits his inadequacies:
A writer? What education did I receive? None. Where did I study?Nowhere. What did I study? It does not matter. I nonetheless became
a writer immediately, because I wrote more than I have ever read;
hence I thought more than I had food for thought.
It was in this atmosphere of looking for new horizons that Hess came upon
Spinoza. To many Jews of his generation, Spinoza was the epitome of the
first modern Jew, who transcended the limits of his Jewish background
without embracing Christianity: it was a new secular option, just then
presented in an historical novel Spinoza, published in by Hess’ closefriend, Berthold Auerbach. Auerbach, who came from a similar Jewish
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Introduction
background to that of Hess, also published a year earlier one of the first
pleas for Jewish equal rights, linking this with a general liberalization of
political life in the German states.
Spinoza thus became the mainstay of Hess’ promise of a reformed
intellectual world – and the focus of the first book to be published by him,anonymously, in , Die heilige Geschichte der Menschheit (The Holy
History of Mankind). We shall dwell more closely on this work later;
suffice it to say that, under the guise of a philosophy of history which
views both Jesus and Spinoza as the two poles of a new world order, Hess
advocates a radical transformation of society aimed at achieving social
equality and the introduction of common property.
The book, published privately by Hess, did not receive much atten-
tion, and a few years later, in , Hess published, again anonymously,his second book, Die Europ¨ aische Triarchie (The European Triarchy), in
which he advocates a radical alliance between France (‘politics’), England
(‘industry’) and Germany (‘philosophy’). Less esoteric in tone, this book
brought Hess to the attention of a number of liberal Rhenish industri-
alists, who were looking for an editor for a new newspaper which they
were about to found to advocate liberal reforms in Prussia and Germany
in general. On January Hess became an editor of the Rheinische
Zeitung. His stewardship of the newspaper – and the newspaper itself –
did not last long, and soon afterwards, like many other radicals, Hess left
for Paris after being harassed by the Prussian authorities for his views. But
the position brought Hess into contact with a wider public as well as with
a group of young radical intellectuals and journalists. One of them was
Karl Marx, and their life-long relationship started in the editorial offices
of the Rheinische Zeitung.
It was a crucial meeting for Hess. Though his communist ideas were
already well formed from the time of The Holy History of Mankind , the
encounter with Marx provided him with a wider scope and philosophical
foundation for his views. It also electrified him, as can be seen from a letter
he wrote to his friend Berthold Auerbach, the author of Spinoza:
Be prepared to meet the greatest, perhaps the only real philosopher
living now. When he will appear in public (both in his writings as well
as at the university), he will draw the eyes of all Germany upon him
. . . He goes beyond Strauss and even beyond Feuerbach . . . Such a
man I always wanted to have as my teacher in philosophy. Only now
do I feel what an idiot in philosophy have I been. But patience! I willstill learn something.
xi
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Introduction
Dr Marx – this is the name of my idol – is still a very young man,
hardly years old; but he will give the final blow to all medieval reli-
gion and politics; he combines the deepest philosophical seriousness
with a cutting wit. Can you imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, Holbach,
Lessing, Heine, and Hegel combined – not thrown together – in oneperson? If you can – you have Dr Marx.
While written in Hess’ customary flamboyant style, this also shows a
generosity of spirit on his part: not only was Marx his junior, but at that
time had not yet published anything, while Hess had already published
two books and a number of articles. Hess’ awareness of his inadequate
education – which we have noted before – resounds here most clearly, and
his deference to Marx, which continued throughout his life, must havehad its foundation in this realization.
In exile in Paris Hess moved in the circles of his German radical friends,
most of them equally from the Rhineland, many of them of Jewish origin.
He was involved in a number of clandestine publications, like the Deutsch-
Franz¨ osische Jahrb¨ ucher (German-French Yearbooks) and others, in which
his, as well as Marx’s writings, were published.His articles on ‘Sozialismus
und Kommunismus’,‘Philosophie der Tat’ (Philosophy of the Deed), ‘Der
Sozialismus’, ‘ Über das Geldwesen’ (On Money), ‘ Über die sozialistis-
che Bewegung in Deutschland’ (On the Socialist Movement in Germany),
‘Kommunistisches Bekenntnis in Fragen und Antworten’ (A Communist
Credo: Questions and Answers), ‘Die Folgen einer Revolution des
Proletariats’ (The Consequences of a Revolution of the Proletariat) served,
next to Marx’s own writings, as thephilosophical foundations of thatbrand
of socialism which later found its expression in The Communist Manifesto.
Hess helped Marx and Engels in the preparation of The German Ideology,
and after joining the League of Communists in also participated in
preparing parts of one of the earlier drafts of The Communist Manifesto.
Yet for all his close cooperation with Marx, some fundamental differ-
ences remain evident. Hess never shared Marx’s views that the emergence
of ideas (‘superstructure’) canalways be traced to economic and social con-
ditions. While Marx himself occasionally allowed the realm of the spirit
some autonomy, Hess remained insistent that spiritual developments have
their own, internal dialectics, and cannot be so easily subsumed under
economic developments, as usually suggested by Marx.
It is because of this that Hess also maintained that national movements – so crucial in the pre- period as well as during the Revolution
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Introduction
itself – cannot therefore be seen just as epiphenomena of social and class
struggle. To him, future liberation would always possess twin aspects –
social as well as national. The theoretical basis for this insight Hess found
in the Hegelian notion of mediation, and it is thus grounded in a philo-
sophical consideration and is not just a political expression of sympathyfor national movements. In an article in the K¨ olnische Zeitung in October
, Hess writes:
Nationality [Nationalit¨ at ] is the individuality of a people. It is this
individuality, however, whichis the activating element: justas human-
itycannotbeactual[wirklich] without distinct individuals, so it cannot
be actual without actual, specific nations and peoples [Nationen und
Volksst¨ amme]. Like any other being, humanity cannot articulate itself without mediation, it needs the medium of individuality.
This approach is similar to the humanistic, universalistic nationalism of
Giuseppe Mazzini, who became, both before and after , close to
the circle of Marx – despite fundamental disagreements on the role of
nationalism. Yet it is clear why Marx basically viewed Hess as an ‘idealist’,
still stuck in a variant of Young Hegelianism.
In the Revolution, Hess, like Marx, returned to Germany and
there put out in Cologne the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. This time, how-
ever, it was Marx who was editor-in-chief, and the newspaper was an
explicit mouthpiece for a radical revolution, though its communism was
sometimes a bit muted.
With the defeat of the Revolution in , both Marx and Hess, like
otherrevolutionaries, had to leave Germany. Marx, after somevicissitudes,
found refuge in England, where he stayed for the rest of his life; Hess
returned to Paris, similarly staying there until his death.
The failure of the Revolution caused much soul-searching and
re-thinking among the German radicals. Initially, Marx was carried away
by the euphoria of the revolution, although in The Communist Manifesto
he advocated, a mere few weeks before the Revolution’s outbreak, a long-
term strategy of structural change. Now he became even more convinced
that the end of capitalism would come only through a series of internal
transformations coupled with patient reforms and organizational work
on the part of the socialist movement. Consequently, in the late s and
early s he purged the League of Communists of the Blanquist, radicalelements who were advocating another attempt at a violent revolution
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Introduction
(in the s he followed a similar strategy in the First International
against the Bakuninists).
Hess’ response to the failure of the Revolution followed a different
path. More than Marx he was impressed by the strength of the national
ingredient in (‘The Spring of Nations’) – in Germany and Italy, aswell as in Hungary and the Slavic lands. While Marx and Engels did even-
tually support Italian and German unification by arguing that only after
the national question was solved would the proletariat in those countries
be able to focus on class struggle, Hess, like Mazzini, viewed the struggle
of oppressed nations for independence as immanent to universal eman-
cipation. He thus supported Italian unification and independence, and
viewed French support for it – though politically motivated by French
raison d’´ etat under Napoleon III – as a continuation of the post-French revolutionary tradition both under Republican and Napoleonic
rule.
It was in this context that Hess also shifted his position on the ques-
tion of Jewish emancipation. As becomes clear in his Holy History of
Mankind , the Jewish ingredient in both his reading of history as well
as his political project is central: universal human liberation will also
bring equality to the Jews, and because of the way in which he reads the
Jewish contribution to history – through the Mosaic legislation as well as
through Spinoza – the Jews bring to world history both a commitment to
social justice as well as an existential need for it. Yet it is always within a
radically transformed Europe that Hess saw the solution to the so-called
‘Jewish Question’: the integration of the Jews into a radicalized European
culture and society is to Hess the only worthy and achievable goal.
The salience of nationalism in the revolutions, as well as sub-
sequent developments in Germany, gave Hess pause and caused him to
reconsider his position. Hess was the first to discern in German national-
ism not only a strong and dangerous chauvinism and general xenophobia,
but also the development by German nationalists of a virulent racist
approach to the ‘Jewish Question’: under such conditions, even conver-
sion ceases to be an option. It is a harsh premonition which moves Hess
to write in in Rome and Jerusalem:
The Germans hate less the Jews’ religion than they hate their race,
they object less to the Jews’ particular religion than to their particular
noses. Neither religious reform nor baptism, neither Enlightenmentnor Emancipation, will open the gates of social life to the Jews . . .
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Introduction
You cannot reform the Jewish nose, nor can you turn through bap-
tism the dark, curly Jewish hair into blond, nor will any comb ever
straighten it.
And in another passage:
It did not help [the composer Giacommo] Meyerbeer that he was
always careful not to include Jewish themes in his operas . . . When-
ever mentioning his name, the respectable Augsburger Allgemeine adds
parenthetically ‘actually Meyer Lippman Beer’. It did not help the
German patriot [Ludwig] Börne that he Christianized his original
name ‘Baruch’. He himself admits it, saying that ‘whenever my oppo-
nents are at a loss for an argument against B¨ orne, they always bring
up Baruch’.
Yet the basic argument in Rome and Jerusalem is positive: the Jews are a
nation, and like all nations entitled to a polity of their own. Hess always
viewed the Jews as a nation, not a mere religious community; but it was
only now, under the impact of a heightened nationalism in Europe (and
in Germany in particular) that Hess advocated the establishment of a
Jewish commonwealth in Palestine – alongside the ‘rebirth’ of the ‘ancient
Kingdoms of Egypt and Syria’ which would similarly emerge from the
dissolution of the ‘sick man of Europe’, the Ottoman Empire. This, to
Hess, was in tune with the general spirit of the age which leads to national,
as well as social, emancipation. It is in the context of the ongoing unifica-
tion of Italy (not yet fully achieved in ) that Hess opens his Rome and
Jerusalem – subtitled Die letzte Nationalit¨ atenfrage – The Last Nationality
Question – with the following statement:
With the liberation of the Eternal City on the Tiber begins the liber-
ation of the Eternal City on Mount Moriah; with the renaissance of Italy, begins the renaissance of Judea . . . The Spring of the Nations
began with the French Revolution . . . The awakening of the dead
has nothing alienating in it in a period in which Greece and Rome
are being revived, Poland breathes anew and Hungary sets out to arm
itself for the last struggle.
To this Hess adds that, because the Jews maintained a strong commu-
nitarian tradition of solidarity, based on the Mosaic legislation which he
calls here ‘social democratic’, the new Jewish commonwealth in the Landof Israel will develop along socialist lines.
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Introduction
While Rome and Jerusalem had hardly any impact when it was published
– Hess’ socialist colleagues viewed it as an aberration, and few Jews cared
for such ideas in the s – it was later, after the founding of modern
Zionism, to become one of the classics of the Zionist, and especially the
socialist Zionist, canon. It has been translated into many languages, fromPolish and Russian to Yiddish, Ladino, and Hebrew, and thus eventually
emerged as the best known of Hess’ writings. It is for this reason that the
Labour movement in Israel, under David Ben-Gurion, transferred Hess’
remains from Cologne to the kibbutz cemetery on the shores of the Sea
of Galilee, which is as close to a mausoleum to socialist Zionism as exists
anywhere in Israel.
After publishing Rome and Jerusalem, Hess remained active in the
socialist movement, and for some time also served as Marx’s representa-tive on the Council of the International Workingmen’s Association (the
‘First International’), since Marx could not freely travel to the Continent.
Yet his writing activity diminished, though towards the end of his life
he attempted, not very successfully, to compose an ambitious work, Die
dynamische Stofflehre (The Dynamic Theory of Matter), in which he
tried to present an overall dialectical philosophy of matter and move-
ment, aiming to combine Spinoza’s pantheism, Hegelian dialectics, and
modern evolutionary science. When he died on April , a non-
religious ceremony was held in which he was eulogized by representatives
of French radical democrats, German socialists, and the German workers
in Paris.
()
This volume includes Hess’ first publication, The Holy History of
Mankind , and three of his later articles, composed during the height of
his socialist literary activity prior to the Revolution. They represent
different stages in the evolution of his thought, yet point, despite their
different style, to the same critical thread running through all his writings.
The Holy History of Mankind , published anonymously in , when
Hess was twenty-five years old, is also the first full-length socialist tract to
appear in Germany. By hiding behind the appellation ‘A Young Disciple of
Spinoza’ (“Von einem J¨ unger Spinozas” ), the author sends a double mes-
sage to his readers. At a time when radical philosophers in Germany
viewed themselves mainly as ‘Young Hegelians’, the reference toSpinoza suggests an alternative intellectual provenance; and by invoking
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Introduction
Spinoza – the first modern Jewish philosopher – Hess also subtly tells
those of his readers who may be Jewish that, like the Master of Amsterdam,
he may be rooted in the Judaic tradition, but intends also to transcend it.
As the first socialist book in Germany, Hess’ tract stands out as an
unusual amalgam: an attempt to propose a socialist synthesis of Judaismand Christianity mediated through an original, if not idiosyncratic, read-
ing of Spinoza’s pantheism. Its structure is cumbersome, its sometimes
eclectic erudition attests to the author’s self-taught learning, its language
ranges from the poetic to the wooden, combing quasi-prophetic pathos if
not bombast with shrewd social and political analysis.
It abounds in mottoes and quotations, mainly biblical, which seem both
to ward off the censors with an apparent display of piety, as well to as relate
its pronouncements to an older moral tradition. That sometimes thosemottoes – as well as the subheadings of the chapters – have very little to do
with the substancediscussed under them, may only add to the perplexity of
the reader and to the neglect which the book has suffered from the general
intellectual reading public as well as from scholars dealing with early
socialist thought (or, for that matter, the emergence of Zionism). It can
easily be shown that many scholars who mention the book in their writings
have obviously not taken the trouble to plough through its sometimes
foggy and often repetitive prose.
Yet, despite all this, the book possesses a coherent overall structure
and leads towards a clear political and ideological message. Its two parts
(I: ‘The Past as the Foundation of What Would Happen’ and II: ‘The
Future as the Consequence of What Has Happened’) clearly divide the
book into an historical and a programmatic section, with the political
message advocated at the end already determining the construction of the
philosophy of history proposed in the first part.
Hess’ philosophy of history is developed under the overall influence of
Herder and Hegel, though neither writer is mentioned explicitly in this
context. It views historical development as determined by a successive
march of cultures anchored in specific nations (Volksgeister ), each drawing
on the accumulated heritage of its predecessors and bequeathing its own
contribution to historical progress to those following it. As in Hegel,
transitions are mediated through the work and acts of world-historical
figures; as in Herder, each historical period or nation goes through the
three stages of growth, flourishing, and decline (under the impact of some
writers on natural sciences, the botanical and biological analogies are morepronounced in Hess than in Herder himself).
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Introduction
Yet while this structure of world-historical development, and its dialec-
tical internal relations and ultimate telos, are typical of early nineteenth-
century German intellectual writing, its context is innovative and might
even have been disturbing to many of Hess’ readers. The conventional
reading of world history then prevalent in historical writing in Germany(whose traces can still be discerned even today in many conventional his-
tory books) would start with ancient Greece and Rome, perhaps preceded
by the Orient (ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia), then move through the
Middle Ages towards the modern age. In this structure, the Jews (if men-
tioned at all) would appear on the margin, as a footnote or an almost
irrelevant curiosity; though because of the origins of monotheism and
Christianity it would be difficult to disregard them completely. Certainly
they would disappear almost completely from any meaningful scheme orperiodization of history after the appearance of Jesus or the destruction
of the Temple in AD .
As already implied in the reference to Spinoza, Hess turns the tables
on this marginalization of the Jews in the conventional scheme of history:
rather than presenting the pagan-Christian (i.e. Gentile, though Hess
never uses the term) component as the central axis of history, with the
Jews relegated to the margin, he proposes a philosophy of history which
(at least in its headings) is Judeo-centric: it is Abraham, Moses, David, and
Ezra – and eventually Spinoza – who are the pivots of history, rather than
Pericles, Socrates, Caesar, and Constantine. ‘Gentile’ history is relegated
to the margins, and is drawn into the mainstream of world history only
through the mediation of that Jew – Jesus – who bridges the gap between
the old particular Jewish covenant and the universality of humanity, and
whose message Hess views as central to the progress of humanity. This
historical progression is to be further elaborated and truly annunciated
by another universalizing Jew – Spinoza. One can imagine both Christian
and Jewish readers being uncomfortable – for contradictory reasons –
with this unusual reading of history. What also stands out is Hess’ clear
reference to the Jews as a people and a nation (Volk or Nation), and not a
merely religious community.
Equally discomfiting to both Christian and Jewish readers would be the
principle of Hess’ periodization of history. Following Joachim of Fiore,
Hess views history as divided – in the manner of the Trinity – into three
parts: the periods of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit. But having adopted this highly Christian reading of the historyof salvation, and following conventional Christian theology in anchoring
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Introduction
overcome (aufgehoben), while preserving its universal message of salva-
tion; but this salvation had to be re-directed to the here-and-now, to
terrestrial, social reality. This to Hess was the contribution of Spinoza’s
pantheism: it recovered, within a universal framework, the unity of mat-
ter and spirit which had characterized the ancient Jewish common-wealth – hence it is the ultimate apex of history, the true dialectical
synthesis of Judaism and Christianity, now appearing as a new teach-
ing relating to a modern society formed by the development, across
the Atlantic, of commerce and industry, leading towards social equal-
ity and the abolition of inheritance: while community of property is
explicitly mentioned as a desired goal, this is done in a circumspect lan-
guage – partly due to considerations of censorship, partly apparently as
an expression of Hess’ own aversion to violence and his preference forgradualism.
All this is sometimes expressed in Delphic language, overburdened
with botanical analogies which obfuscate many of Hess’ arguments. But
as one progresses from the historical Part I to the programmatic Part II,
the explicit social criticism becomes more and more apparent.
Yet Hess approaches his criticism of contemporary conditions gingerly,
and it is only slowly that the full range of his radical project becomes
apparent. In what is called An Interlude between Part I and Part II, he
refers to the turmoil and Zerrissenheit of his age by exclaiming:
Men have once again reached the point where they are lost without
a compass in a sea of errors, finding themselves in the middle of a
Noahite deluge of ideas. Where is the ark, where is deliverance?
He is aware that dramatic changes will occur: he hopes they will happen
peacefully, and explicitly wishes to defend himself against the claim that
‘we intend to bring about or stir up revolutions’ and insists that ‘we do
not wish to excite blind passions’. He is, however, aware that existing
social inequalities, which now appear for the first time in Hess’ text as
the cause of current unrest, can be overcome either ‘by peaceful medi-
ation or by violent strife’. He implores humanity to launch an overall
effort both to find out the causes of social inequality as well as to develop
programmes to overcome them, because if they ‘will not be mediated
peacefully – namely through appropriate, new laws – they will in the end
turn violently into revolutions’. So, despite the apparently careful lan-
guage,the revolutionary potential is not overlooked, though it is clearly notadvocated.
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Introduction
Yet when Hess moves on to the causes of the current crisis as understood
by him, the radicalism of his thinking comes into the open.
To Hess, the root of social evil has been the emergence of inheritable
private property. Hess does not attack private property as such, though
he commends the community of property: it is the heritability of privateproperty – ‘historical right’ in the language of contemporary German
jurisprudence – which replaces individual effort and initiative by pas-
sive, corrupting enjoyment of one’s parents’ achievements. In an interest-
ing parallel Hess compares the heritability of private property with the
idea of inherited chosenness which had corrupted the ancient Israelites.
Here as there, one generation’s achievement turned into the next gen-
eration’s unmerited claim of possession, and it does not matter whether
the goods thus handed over from one generation to another are spiri-tual (chosenness) or material (property); and just as the ancient Hebrew
nation’s chosenness has been transformed and transcended by Jesus into
a universal link to the divine, so inheritable private property has to be
transcended.
Hess does not propose a detailed plan for this radical transformation of
society. Yet he explicitly envisages the need to ‘create new states’, though
he is unclear how this would come about, and his radical vision lacks an
operational plan; in this he not different from many of the other early
socialists, like the Saint-Simonians and the Proudhonists. His message is
sometimes contradictory. On the one hand he maintains that ‘it is unnat-
ural and atrocious to wish to abolish suddenly all inequality’, yet a few
pages later he insists that eventually, in what he calls humanity’s ‘old age’,
‘all distinction between “mine” and “thine” can again disappear’, and ‘the
primordial equality has to be mediated through the abolition of the right
of inheritance’. On another occasion Hess declared that
Our era strives towards equality – this cannot be denied; but [doesthis imply] that it is headed immediately towards the community of
property? Let this happen one day in the future, let it be the last goal
of ageing mankind.
These ‘new states’ which will, eventually, be organized on a principle
transcending private property, will also be organized as national states:
‘states must separate themselves according to their distinct tongues’; Hess
quickly adds: ‘though all are encompassed in a higher bond and live in
harmony’. This gentle aside is, of course, quite radical and revolutionaryin a pre- context, and hints towards Hess’ insistence that future
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Introduction
emancipation be social as well as national: the seeds for his call for an
independent, socialist Jewish commonwealth in Rome and Jerusalem can
already be discerned here.
The language of Hess’ call for a society transcending private prop-
erty, and his insistence that the modernizing trends of commerce andindustry lead towards it, owe, of course much to Saint-Simonian ideas,
and Hess acknowledges as much. But on one fundamental issue he
disagrees with them: while Saint Simon, and even more his followers
like d’Enfantin, grounded their socialist vision in Christianity, for Hess
Christianity – for all of its centrality in his world-historical scheme –
is the cause of modern alienation because it preached a kingdom which is
not of this world, and thus left terrestrial reality to the rapaciousness of
human passions andprivate property. It is in the ancientHebrew common-wealth, and not in Christianity, that Hess anchors his social vision, since
under Mosaic legislation ‘the Jews did not know the difference between
religious and political commandments, between what is due to God and
what is due to Caesar’. ‘Highest equality’, Hess argues, ‘cannot emerge
directly, as the [Saint] Simonists maintain, from Christianity, that peak of
inequality’.
The enemy of a just social order, according to Hess, is not the old feudal
aristocracy, whose power – both political and economic – has already been
broken both by the French Revolution and the emergence of industry. It is
the new ‘aristocracy of money’, and it is through them that man becomes
‘beholden to this money-devil [Geldteufel ]’.
It is interesting to cull from Hess’ sometimes disorganized and mean-
dering account the characteristics he attributes to the rule of the aristoc-
racy of money – and compare them with the language used by Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels in their Communist Manifesto ten years later. There
is no evidence that, despite their close relations in Paris in the early s,
Marx and Engels had ever read The Holy History of Mankind ; yet Hess
repeated many of his ideas in some of his later articles, of which Marx
was clearly aware: they also sometimes appeared in collections which he
himself edited. Be the intellectual archaeology of these articles character-
istic of modern society as they are, and in a general sense they represent
the common discourse of the Zeitgeist in which many of the socialists
operated, the similarities are worth pointing out.
According to Hess, the rule of the aristocracy of money causes the
following :
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Introduction
Polarization of society between rich and poorer.
Further pauperization.
The poor have ‘neither fatherland nor family’.
Also with the disappearance of the old guilds and corporations, the middle
classes and the artisanate are being squeezed out of business and willdisappear before the power of large conglomerates.
Hess also believed, however – and here he follows the Saint-Simonians
and clearly anticipates the Marxist argument, though his language is less
coherent and less doctrinaire – that the emergence of modern indus-
try, while causing the crisis of modern society, is also the key to the
emergence of a new world of social justice. The characteristics of this
new society are spelt out by Hess in some detail, and the description
is again reminiscent of some of Marx’s later formulations, both in the
Communist Manifesto as well as in the earlier Economic-Philosophical
Manuscripts.
Hess’ future society, which will transcend private property, will develop
along the following lines:
Abundance, created by socially controlled industry, will integrate over-
all social interests, and society will be based on altruism, solidarity
and harmony, ‘because all interests are interwoven . . . Old contrastsbetween the low and the high, plebeians and patricians, the poor and the
wealthy – this source of all collisions, disturbances, iniquities, and
horrors – have all lost their poison’.
Peace will reign in society, both internally and externally.
The distinction between town and country will disappear, as ‘villages will
adorn themselves with wonderful buildings and cities with inspiring
gardens’.
Women will be equal to men, and be given the same education.Freelove will replace the shackles of matrimonial bonds which were always
linked to property.
Public education will be freely available to all children.
Society will take care of the health and welfare of the sick and the elderly;
with the disappearance of poverty, crime will disappear as well.
Formal law will disappear, with people obeying their internal law which
will reflect Spinoza’s amor dei intellectualis.
The people’s sovereignty will be guaranteed by the political structure
organized through freely associated communities, subordinated to the
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Introduction
overall supervision of the states; the states, in their turn, will be asso-
ciated in a universal league of nations.
And finally, with industry guaranteeing abundance, human beings will be
able to turn their activities to their highest calling – artistic creativity.
ThesearethemainfeaturesofwhatHesscalls‘TheNewJerusalem’.While
its elements of solidarity are anchored in the old Jewish commonwealth, its
universalistic message has been mediated through the appearance of Jesus
and Spinoza. To make clear that he is not reverting to another version of
particularistic Jewish messianism, Hess makes clear that it is ‘in the heart
of Europe [that] the New Jerusalem will be founded’ – i.e. not in distant
Palestine.
Yet the book ends on a high note with a strange and moving ode to the
Jewish people, who have incorporated over generations the divine spirit
and who through Moses, Jesus, and Spinoza have, according to Hess, given
mankind the ability to move from one stage of history to another. The
Jewish ‘ancient, holy nation-state [Volksstaat ] . . . perished long ago, but
continues to live until this very day in the feelings of its members’. This
nation, Hess continues, ‘has been summoned from the very beginning to
conquer the world – not like pagan Rome by its force of arms, but through
the inner virtue of its people . . . [and] this spirit has already permeated
the world’.
It is indeed a strange, if not a bizarre, note which thus ends the first
socialist book published in Germany. It is a testimony both to the crisis
of modern society on the verge of industrialization as well as to the inner
turmoil of a young Jewish intellectual who belonged to that generation
which – in the memorable phrase of Isaiah Berlin – taught itself German
by reading Hegel and Latin by the study of Spinoza.
We haveseenthat in his later writings Hesswould departfromthe quasi-
religious language which characterizes – and perhaps mars – The HolyHistory of Mankind and to many readers appears to obfuscate his argu-
ment. His later writings focus more on social criticism and political action.
While he inspired much of Marx’s thinking, he also came closer to the
latter’s vision of historical development which looked more to social and
economic realities and less to the heavy Hegelian emphasis on the Spirit,
which so much characterized The Holy History. In Rome and Jerusalem
he also switches from his dream of Jewish integration into a socialist, uni-
versalist Europe to a more complex approach: he now advocates Jewishintegration into a radicalized world through the establishment of a Jewish
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Introduction
commonwealth in Palestine. But the major themes of his first book appear
again and again, and are preserved in his later writings; a short excerpt
from Rome and Jerusalem on Jesus and Spinoza suggests only one aspect
of this remarkable continuity.
The three other pieces in this volume come from the period of the
mid-s, spent by Hess in Paris and Brussels, where he was closely
associated with Marx and other German exiles who founded the Bund
der Gerechten (The League of the Just), which later changed its name
to Bund der Kommunisten (The League of Communists). Reading these
articlessuggests how theideas which eventually becamecrystallized in The
Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels for the League, had
been germinating for some time among the group of German exiles in
Paris and Brussels. While it is obvious that the Manifesto owes both its
analytical depth as well as rhetorical power to its immediate authors, it
represents ideas which had been thrashed out in numerous meetings and
previously expressed in other publications – though never in the same
forceful manner. Hess’ contribution to this is evident from the three arti-
cles included here. They also represent three different modes of writings:
theoretical, popular, and programmatic.
The first, Socialism and Communism, is ostensibly a review of a book
written by a Prussian official, Lorenz von Stein, on French revolution-
ary ideas. Stein, a moderate Hegelian, meant his book as a cautionary
tale, warning against the dangers of French-style communist and socialist
ideas; yet Hess – like other German authors of the period – uses this
book as a way to acquaint readers in Germany with French revolutionary
ideas, but also to suggest how incomplete Stein’s account of them is. While
Hess agrees with Stein about the provenance of French radical social ideas
from the general French revolutionary tradition, he shows their affinity
with some critical aspects of German idealist philosophy, and points tothe immanent tension between the ideas of Libert´ e and Egalit´ e, leading
necessarily to a critique of private property.
In A Communist Credo: Questions and Answers Hess tries his hand at a
popular mode of writing; rather than the dense philosophical discourse
which has characterized his own previous writings – and as well as that
of other German thinkers like Marx, which was aimed at the radical-
ized German intelligentsia – this is the first attempt by a German rad-
ical not to address his intellectual peers but to ‘seize the masses’. Thismode is a natural outcome of the emergence of the kind of revolutionary
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Introduction
socialism which eventually found its expression in the Social Democratic
movement, which tried to combine the theoretical insights of radical-
ized intellectuals with the social and political power of the proletarian
masses.
By adopting the quasi-liturgical mode of the catechism, Hess’ Credo is,in its format and language, the forerunner of many later socialist tracts.
One may wonder how effective this was, but the fact that it was reprinted
several times in the s must suggest that it had gained some respon-
siveness. It is difficult, though, not to feel slightly embarrassed by the
whiff of a patronizing style which creeps up here and there; apparently,
when adopting the ecclesiastical style of a hieratic and hierarchic liturgy,
this may be unavoidable. Yet despite these handicaps, Hess manages to
convey in relatively simple language some of the more fundamental tenetsof the socialist and communist social criticism developed by him in his
more theoretical writings. Of special significance is Chapter IV (‘Of the
Transition to Communist Society’), in which Hess insists that for all
its revolutionary ideology, a proletarian revolution should not aim at an
abrupt nationalization of all means of production, but rather create eco-
nomic and political mechanisms which will, over a lengthy process of
fundamental transformation, make private property redundant and sup-
planted by social property. This would also involve the eventual abolition
( Aufhebung) of the state as a mechanism expressing class hegemony.
On a theoretical level these ideas are further amplified in Hess’
series of articles, Consequences of a Revolution of the Proletariat . Of the
four articles under this title, only the second has been included here:
it is theoretically the most significant. These articles were written at
the time of the close cooperation among Hess, Marx, and Engels in the
deliberations of the League of Communists, and comparing it with the
Communist Manifesto, written a few months later, suggests the common
pool of ideas which inspired the small group of German radicals then
in exile in Paris and Brussels. In pointing out that the crisis of modern
bourgeois society stems from over-production, that economic crises are
thus endemic to capitalist production and hence only a social control of
production can bring about the kind of wealth inherent in the productive
possibilities of modern industrialization but hampered by private prop-
erty – in all this Hess appears here at his closest to the ideas eventually
to be propagated by the mature Marx. Equally significant is his repeated
insistence that the revolutionary transformation should entail a gradualphasing out of private property, not a sudden and total nationalization,
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Introduction
which would only bring out chaos and dislocation – a point crucial to the
Marxian project of a proletarian revolution.
Like other early socialists – Saint Simon, Fourier, and Proudhon – Hess
lacks the conceptual cohesion, intellectual rigour, and dramatic presen-tation of Marx, who brought to socialist thought what all his predeces-
sors lacked: systematic academic education and an unprecedented sure
grounding in philosophy, history, and economics; to this was added a pow-
erful rhetorical gift, sometimes verging on stinging invective. Marx thus
superseded his predecessors, and while his sometimes disdainful manner
towards them smacks of arrogance and superciliousness, his claim to be in
a different league is basically justified. Yet he stood on their shoulders, and
without them his opus would in all probability not have been conceivedor carried out.
Moses Hess, with his unique blend of biblical zeal and prophetic vision,
contributed a distinct ingredient to what was to become the corpus of
European socialism. What the moral fervour of his socialist critique lacked
in systematic economic analysis was amply compensated for by his sensi-
tivity to human suffering andhis innovative thinking on social and national
issues. In the pantheon of the minor prophets of European nineteenth-
century social thought, he deserves his place.
In his understanding of the centrality of nationalism to modern history
Hess was aware of a cultural and intellectual force to which many of his
socialist colleagues were almost totally blind. It was this aspect of social
life which some schools of socialism – like the Austro-Marxists and in a
way Soviet Leninism and Titoism as well – later tried to integrate, not
always very successfully, into socialist theory. Hess was the first to realize
that an abstract universalism, without cultural mediation, may turn out to
be hollow, and thus paved the way for a more nuanced, and less dogmatic,
socialist approach to issues of national culture, history, and memory.
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Chronology of the life of Moses Hess
Born ( January) in Bonn, Judengasse
Hess’ father, David, moves to Cologne, leaving
the son with his grandfather, so he could attend
an orthodox Jewish school
On the death of his mother, Hess rejoins his
father in Cologne, continues his Jewish
education and starts working in his father’s shop
c. Breaks with his Jewish orthodox environment,
moves in radical, Young Hegelian circles in the
Rhineland
– Attends, on an irregular basis, philosophy
classes at Bonn University for about two
semesters
Publication of the anonymous Die heilige
Geschichte der Menschheit (The Holy History of
Mankind) in Stuttgart
Publication of the equally anonymous Die
europ¨ aische Triarchie (The European Triarchy)
in Leipzig; meets Karl Marx
(January to December) Editor of the liberal
Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne; meets Friedrich
Engels
or Meets Sibylle Pesch, a seamstress from a
Catholic working-class family in the Aachen
region, his future life companion
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Chronology of the life of Moses Hess
Travels to Paris, later to Zurich, as
correspondent of the Rheinische Zeitung; close
contacts in Paris with Marx and Heine
– Writes a number of articles on communism for
radical publications, including the essay ‘ Überdas Geldwesen’ (On Money); moves between
the Rhineland, Brussels, and Paris
Kommunistisches Bekenntnis (A Communist
Credo) appears
In Paris and Brussels; publishes a series of
articles entitled Die Folgen einer Revolution des
Proletariats (Consequences of a Revolution of
the Proletariat); member, with Marx andEngels, of the League of Communists
– During the revolutionary period, attempts
unsuccessfully to revive the Rheinische Zeitung,
moves in connection with various revolutionary
activities between Paris, Cologne, Geneva, Basle
and Strasburg
– In Geneva, as head of the local branch of the
League of Communists
In Liège and Antwerp; Prussian authorities
issue a general order of arrest (Steckbrief ) against
him; consequently expelled from Belgium
Finds refuge in France where he stays, more or
less continuously, for the rest of his life
– Starts writing on matters of natural sciences for
various publications in France
Joins the Freemasons (Lodge Henri IV de
Grand Orient)
Begins his work on Rom und Jerusalem
In the wake of a general amnesty in Prussia,
returns to the Rhineland; begins
correspondence with Heinrich Graetz, the
German-Jewish historian
Publication of Rom und Jerusalem; begins
activity in Ferdinand Lassalle’s Allgemeiner
Deutscher Arbeiterverband (General GermanWorkers’ Association); returns to exile in Paris
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Chronology of the life of Moses Hess
Following the reactions to his Rom und
Jerusalem, publishes Lettres sur la mission d’Isra¨ el
(Letters on the Mission of Israel); becomes
Paris correspondent for the German Der
Social-Democrat As part of his activity in Jewish affairs, joins the
Alliance Isra¨ elite Universelle in Paris
– Translates into French vol. III of Die Geschichte
der Juden (The History of the Jews) by Graetz
and some of his other writings
Begins to write for the Viennese socialist
Arbeiter-Blatt ; in September, represents the
Basle and Cologne Sections at the rd
Congressof the International Workingmen’s Association
(The First International) in Brussels
Publishes La Haute Finance et l’Empire (High
Finance and the Empire) in Paris as well as an
anti-Bakunin tract Les Collectivistes et les
Communistes, in which he generally supports
Marx’s line against Bakunin’s Anarchists
Expelled from Paris during the Franco-German
War; finds refuge in Brussels
Writes numerous anti-Prussian articles in
various radical Belgian publications; with the
defeat of France and the abdication of Emperor
Napoleon III, returns to Paris in December
Begins work on Die dynamische Stofflehre (The
Dynamic Theory of Matter)
: April Dies after a stroke; the next day a secular service
is held in Paris, attended by French and
German socialist groups as well as Polish exiles
and Jewish activists
April Buried, according to his will, next to his parents
in the Jewish cemetery in Deutz am Rhein, near
Cologne
Die Dynamische Stofflehre (The Dynamic
Theory of Matter) published posthumously by
his widow
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Chronology of the life of Moses Hess
: October Hess’ and his parents’ remains are transferred
from Germany to Israel at the initiative of the
Israel Federation of Labour (Histadrut ) and
re-buried in the cemetery of the first kibbutz in
Kinnereth, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee
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